This morning i read an interesting article here: “The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing” which really hit one of my areas of interest.
It’s a good read on lock down of computing devices. Please let me stay in control of my devices.
I “daily” get irritated on devices locked down leaving me out in the cold. Be it smart phones and tablets, streaming media in general including “over the air” broadcasts etc.
All these are pushed upon me in the name of increased user experience but in reality its only meant to limit my freedom locking me into another silo.
I often have to pay more for less. Take music or videos as an example, before i had a physical copy which i could decide on how to use. Today I’m supposed stream it or store the copy on a controlled device. What if i want to see the same movie clip tomorrow? Sorry, its no longer available…
Lets say that i buy/get a shiny new PVR for my TV. You should be completely aware that you wont have control over saved content any more, even if it’s stored on your PVR hard drive. Broadcasters can decide on how long that it should be available for you. Want to make a copy of the same movie you recorded last night? Forget it… Lets say the PVR breaks down with a hard drive full of content. Lets move the hard drive or content to another device. Forget it, the new PVR wont accept that and further more content on the drive will be encrypted.
The really sad part is that i often end up paying more for the “service” because i do get a “better user experience”, better quality etc. But in reality often these argument is only used to in the same time slip in these DRM measures of which I’m of course not told.